The Exoplanet Encyclopaedia — Readme

About the use of this catalog

update: 29 January 2015

PurposeThis
catalog is a working tool providing all the latest detections and data
announced by professional astronomers, useful to facilitate progress in
exoplanetology. Given the heterogeneity of observational papers, a
uniform catalog (with uniform degree of credibility of planets) is
impossible. Therefore, ultimately, researchers willing to make a
quantitative, scientific, use of the catalog can make their own
judgement on the likelihood of data and detections.

The
former standard limits were13 Jupiter mass, based on the deuterium burning
limit, and 30 Jupitter mass, based on formation scenario. However, the mass-density-radius distribution (Hatzes & Rauer, 2015) shows a clear difference between giant planets and stars at 60 Jupier mass.

An additional difficulty comes
from the uncertainty in the mass value. We therefore allow for a 1
sigma uncertainty and chose 60 Mjup + 1 sigma as an upper mass limit.

We thus finally include planets with masses < 60 Jup up to 1 sigma

Confidence criteriaAre included planet detections published or submitted to professional journals or announced by professional astronomers in professional conferences.

Categories There are 4 categories of planets, Confirmed, Candidate, Retracted and Controversial. A planet is considered as Confirmed if it is claimed unambiguously in an accepted paper or a professional conference.

Data

Planet dataPlanet data are the latest data known. They are taken from:

Latest published papers or professional preprints and conferences

First-hand updated data on professional websites. These presently are:

Mass (MJup/MEarth) : mass of the planet soon coming Msini (MJup/MEarth) : minimum mass of the planet due to inclination effect Radius (RJup/Rearth) : radius of the planet Period (day) : orbital period of the planet a (AU) : semi-major axis of the planet orbit e : eccentrity of the planet orbit from 0, circular orbit, to almost 1, very elongated orbit i (deg) : inclination of planet orbit, angle between the planet orbit and the sky plane Ang. dist.(arcsec) : formal star-planet angular separation given by a/Distance Discovery : year of discovery at the time of acceptance of a paper Update : date of the update of data ω (deg) : periapse longitude : angle between the periapse and the line nodes in the orbit plane Tperi (JD) : time of passage at the periapse for eccentric orbits Tconj(JD) : time of the star-planet upper conjunction T0 (JD) : time of passage at the center of the transit light curve for the primary transit T0-sec (JD) : time of passage at the center of the transit light curve for the secondary transit λ Ang. (deg) : sky-projected angle between the planetary orbital spin and the stellar rotational spin (Rossiter-McLaughlin anomaly).
Impact Param b (%) : minimum, in stellar radius units, of distance of
the planet to the stellar center for transiting planets
TVR (JD) : time of zero, increasing, radial velocity (i.e. when the
planet moves toward the observer) for circular orbits K (m/s) :semi-amplitude of the radial velocity curve Tcalc (K) :planet temperature as calculated by authors, based on a planet model Tmeas (K) : planet temperature as measured by authors Hot pt (deg) : longitude of the planet hottest point Ag : Albedo Log(g) : Surface gravity Disc./Det Method : Methods of discovery/detection of the planet (RV, transit, TTV, lensing, astrometry, imaging. The first method is the discovery one.
Mass Meas method : Method of measurement of the planet
mass (RV, astrometry, planet model for direct imaging) Radius Meas method : Method of measurement of the planet radius (transit, planet model for direct imaging) Alternate names : alternatives names of the same planet Molecules : Species detected in the planet

Number of planets in the system :

Stellar dataStellar data (positions, distances, V mag, mass, metallicities etc) are taken from Simbad or from professional papers on exoplanets.

ErrorsWhen a value is known only by its maximum or minimum its prefix is « < » or « > ». e.g. : < 89.9 or > 0.067.

Planet namesFor
single planetary companions to a host star, the name is generally NNN
b where NNN is the parent star name. When NNN is not taken from a
standard star catalog (e.g. HD, HIP, 2MASS, …), NNN is the name given by
the discoverers (e.g. CoRoT, Kepler, …).For multi-planet systems,
the planet names are NNN x where x = b, c, d, etc refers to the
chronological order of discovery of the planet.Exceptions are possible, like TrES-1 or planets detected by microlensing.For "free floating" planets, the name is the name given by the discoverers.

FunctionalitiesAre provided, with different on-line filters:

Histogrammes for planet and stellar characteristics

Correlation diagrammes between characteristics

AcknowledgementsThe functionalities offered would not have been possible without the technical help of the team.